Musings after spending time with Paul Lisicky’s Song So Wild And Blue, and passages that I marked because of their particular significance to me.
From Lisicky: “But didn’t everyone want to run away? Everyone wanted to keep going forward so they couldn’t be pinned down, couldn’t be evaluated, mocked, and mourned. They wanted to keep changing shape; animals outsmarting their hunter.
I kept writing…
…writing was sometimes harrowing for me…
Writing didn’t feel natural to me, but does writing ever feel that way to anyone? If it does, they’re not trying hard enough…
I’d kept my musical life unlived as a way to protect it, so it could never be sullied, touched by the wrong hands, disparaged by the money system…
In Missing Out, psychotherapist Adam Phillips says our ‘unlived lives, our wished-for lives’ are as significant if not more so than our ‘so-called lived lives.'”
And from her song “People’s Parties,” Joni’s lyric:
I feel like I’m sleeping, can you wake me?
You seem to have a broader sensibility
I’m just living on nerves and feelings, with a weak and a lazy mind
And coming to people’s parties, fumbling, deaf, dumb, and blind
I wish I had more sense of humor, keeping the sadness at bay
Throwing the lightness on these things, laughing it all away
For Lisicky, after graduating from Rutgers University–New Brunswick, he earned his MA from Rutgers University–Camden, and then was accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop. Finishing there, he won a substantial fellowship. He compares these things and his reactions to Joni’s career and her choices. A remark of his father’s had him contemplating fame, and he concluded, “Fame was tawdry. Cheap. Fame was the kind of thing that had sent Joni running…[s]he wanted something deeper and more ineffable that had little to do with herself but something outside her, something she couldn’t see and didn’t even want to. Why else keep reaching?”
Once again, I have so much to think about, as if I’m in Paul Lisicky’s classroom.
Today’s Joni Mitchell song list from my reading:
“A Case of You” 1971
“Taming the Tiger” 1998
“People’s Parties” 1974
“Moon at the Window” 1982
“Dancin’ Clown” 1988
“Tax Free” 1985
“Shiny Toys” 1985
“The Reoccurring Dream” 2003
“Smokin’ (Empty, Try Another)” 1985
“Ray’s Dad’s Cadillac” 1991
“That Song About The Midway” 1966
The only other musician I know of that created a double CD album to go with his autobiography is Moby. It happens I’m on the CDs I have by him in the weekly laundry music of live or soundtrack single band/artist game, because I bought that double CD set, but without later learning it goes with his autobiography, and Music from Porcelain is meant to be similarly organized like that Joni Mitchell list. I do, however have to get through my collection of his albums first. That’s the game. I don’t have his book though.
After that is The Monkee’s greatest hits CD before entering The Moody Blues. Eventually I’ll spend an eternity in all of the Pet Shop Boys and Queen albums because I have both a soundtrack a live album for those. It took over a month to get through my Madonna albums too.
But, I can’t imagine reading and song singing at the same time! Do you soend part of the time doing one and later the other or do you both read and music? Or does the book prompt tracks?
Just to be clear, the memoir is about Paul. He does provide details about Joni’s life, but it’s more about how her evolution as an artist and her music affected/guided/spoke to his own artistic journey, first in music (he composed and wrote lyrics) then his writing career (fiction and memoir). So Paul isn’t sharing his own music as he takes us through his artistic journey (it sounds like Moby is writing about his life accompanied by his own music).
While I’m reading, when he mentions a specific Joni Mitchell song, I do two things. I find a lyric sheet online, then I find the song on YouTube. As I listen, I have the lyrics in front of me. That way I know exactly what he’s referencing. (If I’m really curious about Joni’s motivation for writing a song or who it might have been about, I research that before I move on.)
I then continue to read, until another song is mentioned. Sometimes he’ll mention several in a row, and I listen to them all, then go back to reading his text. It means my progress is slow, but it’s like a friend is talking to me and saying, “This song made me understand [or think or feel] this; would you like to listen to it?” There are always at least three of us in the moment: Paul, Joni, and me (in addition to other people who populated the life experiences he’s sharing). He’s such a good writer that I don’t need the Joni songs, they just enhance my understanding of his perspective and appreciation for his writing and his progression as an artist.
In a way, that’s how I would imagine Moby’s autobiography would work if the 2CDs’ tracks were organized to follow that book I never bought. I was thinking that Paul wrote Joni’s biography, and since it turns out this is Paul’s life so that clears up that confusion, thanks!
I was wondering, if I should write a memoir and arrange and assess my life by the music I’ve been most connected to, if there’s one artist that takes center stage over all others. I’m not sure there is, not even the Beatles.